


Balance

by SpecialTrampAgentOtters (Elsie1285)



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-06
Updated: 2016-10-06
Packaged: 2018-08-19 21:52:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8225911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsie1285/pseuds/SpecialTrampAgentOtters
Summary: For @leiascully‘s ‘Balance’ fic prompt.
Set during the alternate (read: only) hallway scene in FtF (see below).Credit for the last line and some inspiration goes the ‘Black Flies’ by Ben Howard.





	

I turn.

“But you saved me! As difficult and as frustrating as it’s been sometimes, your goddamned strict rationalism and science have saved me a thousand times over! You’ve kept me honest; you’ve made me a whole person. I owe you everything….Scully. And you owe me nothing.”

My eyes flee from his, the ripples of his honesty pooling timid tides at my feet and seeping into my pores. My toes are poised at the edge of a precipice and my subconscious rocks my determination forward instinctively into his quiet desperation and then away, edging me from him towards the sanctum of Salt Lake City.

He sighs; “I don’t want to do this alone.”

I am all at sea, shaking my head back and forth, as underwater, consciousness swirling in the dismal gloom of his shadowed hallway. 

“I don’t know if I can. But if I quit now, they win.”

I force my eyes back to his, swimming. The intensity in them burns through me; once I plunge from this rocky crag, there is no return, no rope to tether me to the outcrop. The best I can hope for is to raise my arms, fingers flexed and sharp, to slice through the murky liquid of his anguish.

The moment elongates, the swell of the silence invading the corridor, squalling around us, the bastion in the storm. He is the ocean, and I am just a stone. I am driven towards him on the swollen, pregnant tide, surging into his arms as my waves crest against him. He locks one forearm around me, my mainstay to the sand. My toes are curled over the ledge as I rise into his embrace, battening down my hatches even as I let him pull me close. 

We float, the silence warm and wombing, my ear pressed to his chest and my eyes blinking away darts of salt before they patter against my cheeks. Until we retreat, the rope of love fastened but fraying between us, docking us to each other, for better or for worse. I am Ceto; I am Volturnus; I am Eurybia, riding and weathering this storm. I press my lips to his forehead, wishing him safe passage.

There is a moment of balance, undulations paused and the current stilled as we press, forehead to forehead. His pulse palpitates through my skull, the throbbing, crowning waves pounding against my temple as I breathe him in, musk and saline assaulting my senses until his lean fingers wrap around my head, hooking below my ears, anchoring me to him. My mouth opens as he descends, a gull fixated on his prey,

And I plunge. I am baptised.

The water is warm, rich, salty as I shiver and slide through its depths. I am head-first. I am without care. I relish the cleansing of his lips against mine and I am reborn.

No man is an island; this I know.


End file.
